Technical Field
Electronic surveillance systems and digital cameras.
Description of the Related Art
As is known, 3-D cameras are commercially and economically offered for various applications, initially related to game systems.
Skeletonization is a known technique to exploit the multiple images provided by 3-D cameras in real time. Major limbs or appendages of one or more subjects are identifiable and gestures are trackable.
Motion detection is also a well known technology by comparison of one frame vs another or by frequency domain analysis of corresponding pixel blocks.
Surveillance cameras which record selected pixel blocks are known. Because JPEG compatible files consist of blocks of pixels encoded in the frequency domain, some blocks may be distinguished from others by their changing coefficients.
Modern electronic cameras capture frames of video data at 30 times per second. This is a large quantity of data which can easily cause congestion if uncontrolled. Unnecessary recording, storing, and transmitting these video frames is consume substantial bandwidth.
Hundreds of cameras can deliver images to monitors which show multiple windows in real time. This can be nearly hypnotic to a viewer.
Studies have shown that after more than one hour of viewing, a substantial percentage of human viewers cannot maintain their sensitivity or alertness. As a result, the current utility of surveillance is predominantly after the fact forensic analysis. Whose fault was it? What actually happened vs. what was claimed? Are the witnesses truthful? It is known that recollections are often contradicted by recordings.
Conventional video surveillance systems are known to be primarily used for forensic analysis long after an activity was recorded and stored. This is because, with hundreds of cameras feeding into a central monitoring station, the monotony of watching the same scene, even of moving objects, causes watchers to become inattentive after a few hours of beginning. One solution is to employ testers to simulate an event of interest in reality. Another solution is to inject computer generated avatars (guns, explosives) into security images to break up the boredom. All of these still depend on a human to recognize a non-normative object or behavior.
Conventional gaming consoles provide a 3D camera so that the player may interact with the game by moving/gesturing/acting in addition to pressing buttons or joysticks. Skeletonization circuits provide a wire frame or solid model of an apparent 3-dimensional actor.
What is needed is a real-time determination of an event of interest and immediate transmission of an alert and succinct image to a security monitoring service. What is needed is a way to call attention of the security monitoring operator to a behavior or orientation of subjects in video surveillance images which require attention, such as running, falling, lying prone or supine, and holding objects in seemingly threatening orientations.